The disclosed system and method relate to marketing systems and more particularly to viral marketing systems and programs.
Many marketing systems are recognized by the marketing and advertising industry for communicating information about a product or service to potential consumers. One form of communication is “word-of-mouth” communication which is generally considered to be the passing of information by verbal means, especially recommendations, but also general information, in an informal, person-to-person manner, rather than by mass media, advertising, organized publication, or traditional marketing. While the term “word-of-mouth communication” implies a spoken form of communication, other forms of passing information between individuals are encompassed within the phrase including written forms of communication. With the advent of computer networks and in particularly the internet, web dialogue, such as blogs, message boards and e-mails are often now included in the definition of word-of-mouth communication.
“Word-of-mouth marketing” or “word-of-mouth promotion” is a term used in the marketing and advertising industry to describe activities that companies undertake to generate personal recommendations as well as referrals for brand names, products and services. Word-of-mouth promotion is highly valued by advertisers. It is believed that this form of communication has valuable source credibility. Research points to individuals being more inclined to believe word-of-mouth promotion than more formal forms of promotion methods because the receiver of word-of-mouth referrals may believe that the communicator is unlikely to have an ulterior motive (i.e.: they are not receiving an incentive for their referrals.) Also, people tend to believe people who they know. In order to promote and manage word-of-mouth communications, marketers use publicity techniques as well as viral marketing methods to achieve desired behavioral response.
“Viral marketing” and “viral advertising” refer to marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.
One perceived limitation of word-of-mouth/viral marketing is that while companies have achieved success in generating sustained viral growth for various marketing promotions, it is difficult to predict the success of a viral marketing campaign as success is often a matter of creative chance rather than mathematical or scientific principles. Furthermore, there have been limited successes in generating revenue as the direct result of specific viral marketing campaigns.
The disclosed system and method of marketing facilitates repeatable viral marketing success from a distribution standpoint while allowing the marketer to motivate a desired consumer action not necessarily related to the viral mechanism. The disclosed business process attempts to leverage proprietary word-of-mouth and viral marketing techniques to motivate the maximum number of participants to complete one or more pre-defined consumer action(s) for the minimal cost. In doing so, the business process accounts for and manipulates the inverse correlation between word-of-mouth/viral marketing (generating new participants by exploiting social networks) and the ability to motivate a consumer action (selling a product, etc). The process preferably uses “trials” and “analytics” to achieve these and other business purposes.
The disclosed system and method include a trial process and an analytical suite. The analytical suite takes as inputs the data generated by users interacting with the trial. The outputs of the analytical suite form the basis of a decision making process. The objective of the decision making process is to “optimize” the invitation process to achieve the maximum number of participants, while simultaneously achieving the maximum number of desired consumer actions while minimizing the cost. The challenges presented by the optimization problem are derived from the countervailing nature of these business objectives.
In accordance with one aspect of the disclosure, a method of improving the performance of a viral marketing program comprises developing a plurality of trials of a viral marketing program wherein each of the plurality of trials have a plurality of attributes at least one of which differs from an attribute of the other of the plurality of trials and wherein the viral marketing program has a business objective; exposing a first plurality of users to a first trial of the plurality of trials and a second plurality of users to a second trial of the plurality of trials; collecting first data indicative of the first plurality of users responses to exposure to the first trial which collected first data is reflective of the likelihood of the first trial obtaining the business objective and second data indicative of the second plurality of users responses to exposure to the second trial which collected second data is reflective of the likelihood of the second trial obtaining the business objective; comparing the collected data to identify a trial of the plurality of trials of viral marketing program that is more likely to obtain the business objective than a non-identified trial; and continuing to utilize the identified trial in the viral marketing program while ceasing use of a non-identified trial.
According to another aspect of the disclosure, a computer implemented method of improving the performance of a viral marketing program comprises developing a plurality of trials of a viral marketing program wherein each of the plurality of trials have a plurality of attributes at least one of which differs from an attribute of the other of the plurality of trials and wherein the viral marketing program has a business objective; exposing a first plurality of users to a first trial of the plurality of trials utilizing a first invitation sent over a computer network and a second plurality of users to a second trial of the plurality of trials utilizing a second invitation sent over the computer network; collecting via the computer network first data indicative of the first plurality of users responses to exposure to the first trial which collected first data is reflective of the likelihood of the first trial obtaining the business objective and second data indicative of the second plurality of users responses to exposure to the second trial which collected second data is reflective of the likelihood of the second trial obtaining the business objective; comparing utilizing a processor the collected data to identify a trial of the plurality of trials of the viral marketing program that is more likely to obtain the business objective than a non-identified trial; and continuing to utilize the identified trial in the viral marketing program while ceasing use of a non-identified trial.
According to yet another aspect of the disclosure, a system for improving viral marketing programs comprises a server, a computer network and a plurality of clients. The server is configured to act as a host web-server for communications with web clients and is configured to generate a plurality of web pages. The server includes memory and a processor. The computer network is coupled to the server. The plurality of clients are coupled via the computer network to the server via which a plurality of users may access web pages generated by the server. The clients run a web browser. The processor runs software configured to develop a plurality of trials of a viral marketing program wherein each of the plurality of trials have a plurality of attributes at least one of which differs from an attribute of the other of the plurality of trials and wherein the viral marketing program has a business objective. The server is configured to expose a first plurality of users to a first trial of the plurality of trials utilizing a first invitation sent over a computer network to a client and to expose a second plurality of users to a second trial of the plurality of trials utilizing a second invitation sent over the computer network. The server is configured to collect first data indicative of the first plurality of users responses to exposure to the first trial which collected first data is reflective of the likelihood of the first trial obtaining the business objective. The server is configured to collect second data indicative of the second plurality of users responses to exposure to the second trial which collected second data is reflective of the likelihood of the second trial obtaining the business objective. The server is configured to store the first and second data in memory. The processor is configured to access memory to retrieve the collected first and second data and compare the collected data to identify a trial of the plurality of trials of viral marketing program that is more likely to obtain the business objective than a non-identified trial.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon consideration of the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment exemplifying the best mode of carrying out the invention as presently perceived.